Except for the 12 to 14 weeks each winter when the surface of James Bay is frozen hard enough to support traffic on an ice road connecting the Cree villages along the bay’s western shore, the only way in and out of the community of 1,300 is by air. Since that is too expensive for most residents, few leave town. Even when the winter road is operational, all there is at the end of a gruelling eight-hour drive is Moosonee, which to almost anyone else would itself seem remote.

For most of the year, supplies must come in by plane or barge, which makes necessities very expensive and the prices of everything else out of the reach of residents, most of whom are unemployed.

With no work and little chance of travel or creature comforts, residents spend much of their time idle, and idleness is the fountainhead of all sorts of ills — crime, violence, drug addiction and alcoholism.

I have spent time in the Northwest Territories, in places that remind me a lot of Attawapiskat — remote, beautiful, isolated. After a week, I’m ready to come home. The tranquility becomes numbing; the quiet, oppressive. I start to think of the vastness between me and the nearest “civilization” and the distance weighs on my shoulders.

The Attawapiskat Cree probably have a different view. Still, it must be tough to call Attawapiskat home when there is no good way to leave, few prospects for a better life and you are living in a tent in 40-below weather with a bucket as a bathroom.

But make no mistake, this tragic situation — this example of Third World hopelessness inside Canada — is the result of political correctness gone mad.

To be sure, there are other factors involved. But political correctness is the root cause. It has paralyzed our political and bureaucratic establishments against taking the bold action necessary to give aboriginal-Canadians a fresh start, a new chance at being autonomous and self-reliant. It has made throwing money at First Nations’ problems the only acceptable course of action. It has made it impossible for Ottawa to impose standards on aboriginal leaders or to demand accountability for the billions spent on reserves by taxpayers or even to offer much advice about how band councils should manage their affairs. The instant a non-aboriginal suggests First Nations leaders are complicit in their own communities’ difficulties — as soon as someone suggests the cause is anything other than lack of federal funding — allegations of racism are made that instantly put an end to the discussion.

Reserve residents are themselves often concerned about the local state of affairs. But few politicians and bureaucrats are willing to listen because even doing that much is construed as an indirect insult to the competence of First Nations’ leaders.

If the local fire department couldn’t douse flames at a campsite, if the truck stop built with federal grants alongside the highway through the reserve goes belly up or if gang violence turns a community into a war zone, political correctness dictates the problem must be too few taxpayer funds, not mismanagement, corruption or incompetence.

Why are aboriginal squatters still permitted to occupy a subdivision in Caledonia, Ont., for instance? It’s not because they bought the land themselves. Instead it was purchased for them by politically correct politicians afraid to be labelled racist if they forcefully evicted the occupiers. Better just to spend millions to make the situation disappear from view.

When they were still in power, the Liberals tried hard to bring in minimum governance standards for reserves. However, when aboriginal leaders objected to a level of accountability below even that legislated for the smallest non-aboriginal community, the Liberals’ innate political correctness prompted them to back off.

The Tories have been no more courageous.

So we — aboriginals and non-aboriginals — are all now trapped in a vicious cycle. There are problems at Attawapiskat, and scores of other northern aboriginal communities, that go well beyond funding. But thanks to political correctness, funding is all Ottawa can bring itself to do. So billions keep being spent as tragedies keep piling up.

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